The Tower: A Novel (18 page)

When Frau Stesny, not knowing what to do next, locked the door of the classroom where Christian studied in the evenings (he disturbed the quiet of the building, and not only when, at two in the morning, his overwrought brain had the idea of relieving the strain by playing his cello or the school piano) – well, if Frau Stesny locked the rooms, Christian would just go on working in the toilet. He didn’t get much sleep, just four or five hours, and went with glassy, red-rimmed eyes to classes where he only realized the teacher had asked him a question from the gleeful giggles of the rest of the class. The books were beginning to become attached to him, as he called it, for the others they were something like his emblem. He seldom went anywhere without having a book with him. He read during break, while the others ate their rolls, or, during the lunch hour, went out into the yard, where the girls swapped cassettes and the boys played cards, argued about rock bands or discussed the latest football results. He even arranged his books into different categories: reading for the bus he took to Dresden, reading for the lessons he found boring (English with Frau Kosinke, geography
with Herr Plink, who kept waving his pointer at the maps hanging on the walls), reading for his free time (his daily chapter) and reading for the break. Soon he was no longer satisfied with reading one chapter of world literature a day and set himself 100 pages. His day extended well into the early hours of the next. During the autumn break, when he naturally continued his study, he increased his quota to 400 pages a day, with the result that he sometimes read for fourteen, fifteen hours on end and then got up off the couch eyes rolling, pale and wan as a potato sprout. Sometimes he read two or three books in a day and afterwards all he knew about Tagore, for example, was that during the previous week he had got through five books by him. He ploughed his way through the Waldbrunn library, returned the complete editions of Max Planck, Rutherford, Albert Schweitzer after three weeks, in order to take out the next enticing pile for the next week, and the longer the book, the better! Christian loved long books. A novel wasn’t a real novel unless it was at least 500 pages long. At 500 pages the ocean began, anything less than that was paddling in a brook. It was in vain that Meno shook his head and pointed out that there could be more of the world in a short story by Chekhov, more of life and art than in many a fat, blubbery tome. But Christian went for the blue whales, as he called the epic novels of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil and Heimito von Doderer, he loved Thomas Wolfe, from the pages of his books came the sound of ships’ sirens, music from the steamers in the Southern states, the whistles of the American transcontinental trains. He read that Eugene Gant (that is Wolfe himself, he thought) had read 20,000 books in ten years (which seemed absolutely unimaginable to Christian), a real logodipsomaniac, then.

‘Now Christian’s really flipped his lid,’ Verena said.

On free days it had to be 500 pages, so for that he didn’t bother with physics and chemistry. Now the following happened: Robert had got really hooked on some Balzac novel and, out of the blue, worked his way through 555 pages in a single day. That mustn’t be allowed to
happen; as far as reading and studying were concerned, Christian was the boss, Robert’s record had to be broken. One day Christian got up at four in the morning, washed, had not too full a breakfast and started to read. He wasn’t going to study that day, it was to be entirely devoted to breaking the new record. He read uninterruptedly from 4.30 a.m. until 12 p.m., though with two very irritating breaks for lunch and supper that Anne forced him to take. On the stroke of midnight he’d read 716 pages – and forgotten them, but what did that matter, he’d broken the record.

He had to become famous, then those at home would recognize him.

One evening in Waldbrunn, in a dark corner of his brain, overwrought with vocabulary and formulae, the plan for stage-by-stage progress appeared. Christian switched off the light and went to the window. Now the classroom was in darkness, just the metal of the chairs in the window row, which had been put up on the tables, wearily slurped the light from the lamp in the yard. He had no idea how late it was. The street lamps had come on long ago, the contours of the new district of Waldbrunn merged with the waves of the hill above Kaltwasser reservoir. Behind the two sports halls, low, standardized, glass-and-concrete buildings, was the ridge along which the F170 ran. The yellow headlamps of the long-distance lorries rummaged around over the rye-field on the ridge, the way from the school into the town.

The Great Man. Stage 1: Learning, studying, educating the mind – that was the stage Christian was on at the moment. Being highly educated was the first requirement for becoming a great man. A great man was, moreover, highly cultured as well and so when classes were over for the day (usually around 1 p.m.) Christian, instead of having lunch, would go to the club room and occupy the communal record player for an hour. It didn’t bother him in the least if others wanted to use the record player. Apart from him that was mostly only Svetlana – and she was an enthusiastic socialist, wanted to go to Lomonosov University in Moscow and listened to red singer-songwriters, for Christian ‘the pits’. Every minute the record player was on without that
‘nauseating stuff’ (as Christian, Jens and a couple of boys from the twelfth grade said) was a gain for culture. He saw himself as a serious, mature man and as such listened to classical music, though he was pretty much alone among the boarders with that point of view. Christian didn’t let that bother him: the others were philistines, how could they, coming from villages as they did, appreciate the profundity, the seriousness of a Bach, the serenity, the comic detachment of a Mozart, the emotional power of a Beethoven. Since Svetlana was a bit feeble-minded (an opinion he shared with several boys in his class), she didn’t need a record player. When listening, Christian would sit leaning back in his chair, with his legs up, a
profoundly serious
expression on his face when, for example, he was listening to Beethoven. Christian
understood
Beethoven’s outbursts of suffering … Like Christian, this titanic personality must have found himself surrounded by uncomprehending philistines and have had to struggle against them, his whole life long! Beethoven was a Great Man and Christian understood him, for he was cast in the same mould, definitely. Added to that, he really was affected by the music. He didn’t show it; it confused him and when he had the feeling that Svetlana or Siegbert was observing him, he would jump up and switch the record off, furious (leaving the record there, though – he was counting on their curiosity).

Stage 2: University studies. Naturally he would have to abandon them. A trifling university course could not satisfy him, the young scientific genius, the irrepressible hothead and tomorrow’s benefactor of mankind. He would even get poor grades at university: was that not the way it was, had he not read in many biographies of Great Men that they didn’t fit in? Did university courses not cover familiar territory – and wasn’t the reason a Great Man was great precisely that he broke new ground? Something that the simple-minded professors, trying to drum their long out-of-date knowledge into the ordinary minds of their students, could not of course see.

Stage 3: Nervous breakdown. That went with it. The tension the
young Great Man is under is just too much. Even Mozart had sometimes gone off his rocker, so it was quite normal. Christian would have to go through terrible crises and consider suicide four times a day (it had to be four times, once or twice was too little, that happened in almost every family, three times sounded like a cliché, at four, Christian concluded, it somehow seemed more serious).

Stage 4: The Great Achievement, finally completed. Honours, prizes, applause would be heaped upon the young Faustian seeker after knowledge. Now the important thing was to remain modest (because of those who envied him and of the capricious deities of moments of inspiration) and not let himself be dazzled by all these externalities. The Great Man continues his research, restlessly, selflessly. He doesn’t care about the applause, all he cares about is his WORK. He makes a further discovery, even more revolutionary, more profound than the previous one. Petty-minded rivals who had begrudged him his success and shouted from the rooftops that the Great Hoffmann would soon be finished would crawl back into their holes. Remorsefully they would recant, shamefacedly admit their limitations. Triumphant jubilation.

So: down to work.

Love, Christian thought, would distract him from his studies.

Little touching habits, he hadn’t forgotten them and he would presumably always associate them with their childhood: back in the fifties, in the sandstone hills by the Elbe. Meno was waiting, among the crowds doing their Christmas shopping, outside the Intecta furniture shop in
the Old Market arcades on the corner of Thälmannstrasse, and recognized Anne at once from a distance; the way she threw back the orange scarf with a will of its own that she wore over her coat and that kept slipping down off her shoulders as she hurried along, that spot of orange in the turbid swell of the shopping-bag-laden throng; then the way she nibbled at the fingertips of her gloves while still walking, as if she were trying to take them off; that she always ran the last bit, once they had seen each other, embraced him passionately with all her shopping, her net bags with vegetables, her packages dangling from strings (had he ever, since she was married and the boys were beyond kindergarten age, seen her with her hands unencumbered – he couldn’t remember), embraced him unconcerned at what others might think, Meno’s colleagues at the publishers, when she met him there (Dresdner Edition looked out onto the Old Market, Meno just needed to cross the square to get to the furniture shop), or her colleagues from Neustadt Hospital whom she sometimes gave a lift to do their shopping. Anne never introduced him, the women would nod and swarm out at the hurried, well-trained pace of mothers who, after the morning shift, their first job, were setting off in the few hours remaining until closing time on their second job, there must have been something in the newspaper, or the bush telegraph had spread a rumour about deliveries: ‘Attention, housewives, the Centrum store has preserving jars in stock’ (they were needed in the autumn, but they arrived during the winter, what should one do, wait? You always regretted it), on another day the rings for the preserving jars; ‘hairdryers have arrived’ (the particular kind shaped like flounders with the blue plastic casing and black muzzle that after a few minutes of jet-engine noises smelt of burnt flies), or ‘Everything for the Child’: baby bottles of Jena glass that didn’t crack when heated, nappies that would survive no more than three or four washes, pans for boiling nappies, thermometers for checking the water while boiling nappies, Milasan baby food, dummies, two or three of the priceless modern prams that, actually intended for export,
had managed to find their way to a department in a store on the edge of town that was now under siege …

‘Mo.’

‘Anne.’

She kissed him on the cheek and took his hand, waving it merrily up and down as if they were a couple that had just fallen in love. The list: in his mind’s eye he could see Anne’s rough-looking handwriting, a dozen lines, of which a couple at the beginning had been deleted; but he liked going shopping with her, he was interested in all the apparently trivial little things that were needed to make daily life troubleproof: shoelaces, vacuum-cleaner bags, buttons, a darning mushroom (he had seldom seen a new one in the families he visited, everywhere he went the ones he saw were the bread-brown darning mushrooms from the pre-war Müller sewing-machine works in Dresden, riddled with the holes of countless needles), and Anne liked to have him with her, since he never grumbled on their expeditions that took them all round the city, he was able to summon up an interest in coffee filter papers or the varying quality of materials for suits, she trusted his judgement of dress patterns (she had done that, he recalled, when she was still a little girl) and she asked his advice when she needed to buy presents. It was Advent now and when he looked at the faces of the women in the Centrum store or the poorly stocked shops along Prager Strasse, he thought that they hated this time of the year: all the running round after a few ridiculous articles of, in general, mediocre quality, the hustle and bustle of the Christmas Market with its brass bands, the chimney-sweep figures made of prunes, the baked apples, hot, strong grog, moaning kids clinging on to their hands and men who didn’t have to bother with all that because they had to work (but the women had to as well) or were sitting with a beer in their local bar watching
Sports Report
or playing cards. Robert, for example, wanted some new football boots, the ones with screw-in studs, and Anne told him as they crossed the Old Market, heading for Prager Strasse, that she had asked
Ulrich where she might find boots like that, ‘he says the best place would be in Dům Sportu in Prague, they have Bata boots, they’re better than ours, but to go all the way to Prague for a pair of football boots … ? But when I think about it, why not? Perhaps I’d find something for Richard there and perhaps a decent shirt for Niklas, he’s always wearing the same ones and the cuffs are already frayed, I’m surprised Gudrun doesn’t say something about it, and his trousers ought to be let out a bit, they’re much too short for him … We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll manage to get to Prague. You could come too, we’ll go in the car and have a nice day out. And you can speak Czech.’

‘Only the little Libussa teaches me, Anne. But I don’t know if I’ll have the time.’

‘Then we’ll just have to go one Saturday.’

‘Imagine what things’ll be like at Hřensko. And at all the other crossings. We’d have to get some crowns as well.’

‘We’ve still got two thousand. Two thousand unreturned, illicit crowns. And they say Dům Sportu’s got a very good angling department. That’d be something for you. And for Christian.’

‘How’s he getting along? I was talking to him about the senior high school and he seems to be managing all right.’

‘He’s difficult at the moment, he’s not easy to deal with, sometimes he can get quite abusive … He absolutely has to have a new pair of shoes and there’s nothing out there in Waldbrunn. And then the school, you know, he has a lot of work to do; sometimes I think they’re demanding too much – or he does of himself, he’s very ambitious and Richard keeps on at him too … I often wonder whether he’s not too strict with Christian, everyone ought to do what they can and if they can’t, then it’s no use forcing them. Oh, look at these, they’re pretty’ – she held up a few embroidered oven cloths, but shook her head when she saw the price – ‘and he needs some new cello strings as well, do you remember how one snapped at the party? That was a great success, don’t you think? Richard keeps playing your records over and over again.’

‘Does
he still want to be a great, famous doctor?’

‘Christian? Oh yes, he talks about it sometimes. I don’t like the way he puts so much emphasis on the “great and famous”; I mean, being a doctor’s enough, surely? Why great and famous? And if he doesn’t become great and famous, will his whole world collapse? Well, he doesn’t get that from me … Now just look at those stupid rotary eggbeaters. Scandalous it is, really scandalous. Listen,’ she called out to the assistant who was standing behind a pile of lurid plastic products
for the modern housewife
, frozen stiff, ‘I’ll show you something.’ She picked up one of the appliances, which consisted of three intermeshing whisks on a revolving plate with a crank-handle at the side, and set the whisks whirring. Anne turned the handle faster, the whisks got caught up in each other and whichever way she turned the handle, they still didn’t move. Eventually one of the whisks broke off. Anne dropped the broken machine on the counter. ‘And you sell this trash?’ The modern housewives who were standing round started to mutter dangerously.

‘You’ve broken that, you’ll have to pay for it,’ the assistant said. ‘Hey, you, don’t you dare run off, help, police!’

A District Community Policeman came. ‘What’s going on here, citizens?’

‘Comrade DCP, that woman there wrecked this eggbeater and now she’s refusing to pay for it.’

‘There’s no way I’m going to pay a single pfennig for this rubbish, it’s outrageous, I just thought I’d try out your goods so that you can see what your modern housewives have to make do with. A rotary beater, huh, turn it five times and it’s beaten itself to bits.’

‘Citizen, you’ve damaged the goods, the citizen assistant has a right to compensation.’

‘Did you hear that!’ The modern housewives who were gathered round expressed their indignation. ‘That crap costs a pile of money – and it’s not even any use for cracking your old man on the head.’

‘But
this is riotous assembly!’ The DCP took out his notebook. ‘On the other hand … let me have a look.’ The assistant handed him a beater. Then another. One after the other they broke. The assistant was furious and started swearing at the custodian of the law. He lost his temper as well and started shouting that his wife too needed a reliable mechanical eggbeater for her pre-Christmas baking; Meno drew Anne away.

Well, really, she would say. Well, really, he would answer. They were already laughing.

There was a long queue outside the Heinrich Mann Bookshop on Prager Strasse; Anne, sniffing an opportunity, an unusual, unannounced delivery, immediately asked what they had. The man in front of her shrugged his shoulders and said he’d only joined the queue because there were so many in it already, he was just going to wait and see.

‘Some important novel, an illustrated art book?’ Anne asked Meno, then someone shouted that hiking maps had been delivered.

In the window of the music shop next to HO Kaufhalle a few violins were hanging, shining like wet sweets, together with a screaming-gold violin and a ukulele; inside they had guitar strings, double-bass end pins and a good dozen recently delivered Czech violin chin rests (of which Anne took one for Ezzo, you never knew), but no cello strings, though there was an implement for cutting clarinet blades that Anne, since Robert had only one, bought immediately: Robert’s clarinet teacher had a brother who was an oboist and he, as Anne knew, corresponded with a cellist in the Berlin Philharmonic, perhaps they could wangle something through him.

They headed back towards the Old Market, swept along in the crowds coming from the main station and from Leninplatz. The women wrapped in headscarves, many of the men wearing Russian fur chapkas, pedestrians dressed in grey and brown, hurrying along, hunched up, towards the city centre, to the shops under the concrete slabs of the
Königstein and Lilienstein luxury hotels. There were groups of people waiting outside the Round Cinema, which looked like a powder compact with vertical stripes. Meno looked across at the display cases in the promenade outside the various cinemas: Bud Spencer was flexing his biceps on the posters, seeing that justice was done with a smile on his face,
Flatfoot on the Nile
was being shown. The boys wanted to see it, Robert had asked Meno to go with them and had enlisted Ezzo and Reglinde as well, while Muriel and Fabian were going to wait until it was on in the Tannhäuser Cinema. The clock on the Church of the Holy Cross struck five. Meno looked up at the windows of Dresdner Edition in the massive bulk of one of the buildings on the east side of the Old Market; the light was still on in the office of Josef Redlich, the senior editor, in the little room of the proofreader, Oskar Klemm, as well, Schiffner’s window was dark.

A number 11 arrived, the red-and-white, mud-bespattered Tatra cars discharged people going to the cinema and the Christmas Market, women, like Meno, with bulging shopping bags in either hand. Anne was carrying a duffelbag full of clothes that had to be taken to the dry cleaner’s to be mended; it was Friday, the VEB Service Combine in Webergasse was open until 7 p.m. but there was only one hour left to buy things needed for the weekend and to hunt for Christmas presents. Anne suggested they should split up, she gave him the duffelbag, she wanted to look for some socks for Arthur, who lived out in the deepest backwater as far as the supply of goods was concerned, and Emmy had asked for a wheeled tote for shopping, ‘and of course we’ll give her some money as well, her pension’s nowhere near enough, and have you any ideas about something for Gudrun? I did want to get some gloves for Barbara; there were some in Exquisit, but I didn’t get them right away and they’d gone, well, I’ll just have to see if I can get them somewhere else. I’ve already got something for Uli, and for Kurt. At the dry cleaner’s it’s the express service and if they’re difficult, I’ve made an appointment, Mo, the number’s pinned to one of the pieces
of clothing. The umbrella needs a new cover and the two pairs of scissors need sharpening. Where shall we meet?’

‘This end of Webergasse, in an hour?’

‘See you then’, and she was off. Just like the old days, he thought, when we were kids playing cops and robbers and she would disappear in the woods; just a few branches swaying, a dusting of pollen from the spruce trees, an alarmed bird; an invisible door had opened and swallowed her up.

He sometimes thought about their childhood, perhaps he was getting to the age when, amazed at the way time had quietly passed, you start to look back and in the evening, alone with shades, open the photograph album that is full of frozen gestures, you can still smell the aromas round them, they’ve just happened and not, as the date under the photo claims, one day twenty or thirty years ago. See: that apple at the top right of the picture, scarcely visible, but you know that it’s there, that it will be picked in a couple of minutes; the way the juice dripped off Anne’s chin as she bit into it and Ulrich tried in vain to take it off her, and look: Father waving from the window of our house, it’s 1952, not long since we got back from Moscow, when the Peace Race came through Bad Schandau and the crowds on the road beside the Elbe cheered the cyclists, or is he going to play us one of his Hans Albers records, ‘In a Starry Night by the Harbour’, an orange headband, Albers with a Sherlock Holmes pipe is looking up at the sky and Father says, as he takes the record out of the sleeve with the black Decca ellipse: ‘Did you know that the first time he appeared on the stage was here in Schandau, nineteen hundred and eleven?’

And then Anne, on some evenings in his mind’s eye he could see her face at that moment, her furrowed brow, her brown eyes wide with astonishment as she held out the apple to Ulrich; he was just as amazed as she was at this, for he had hesitated to touch the apple, had, embarrassed, pointed at the tree where there were other apples, then put his hands in his pockets and scuffed up the sand with the toe of his shoe …
Anne: you can have it, if you want – but at that moment, with the suddenness of a bird of prey striking, Ulrich’s hand shot out of his pocket and grasped the fruit, leaving Anne stunned, as if the gesture had cut through her like a sword and nothing could undo it; Ulrich ran off with shouts of jubilation.